What’s News, and What Isn’t

The liberal media manifest their bias not primarily by writing things that aren’t true–although that sometimes happens–but rather, by selecting what they do and do not report as news. Major scandals and events of great importance are simply ignored if they do not reflect well on the Democratic Party, while minor stories receive endless attention if they advance the liberal agenda. You could illustrate this every day; here are a few examples from today’s news.

One of the most absurd non-stories of recent years involved a 2011 proposal by Scott Walker’s administration to sell more than 30 decrepit power plants that were owned by the State of Wisconsin and used to heat schools, prisons and so on. Selling the power plants would, with luck, have raised a little money and relieved the state of the need to pay for costly environmental upgrades, but liberals theorized–with absolutely no support of any kind–that Koch Industries, a minor supporter of Governor Walker in his 2010 campaign, wanted to buy the plants and that the proposal represented some kind of sweetheart deal. In fact, no unit of Koch Industries is in the business of operating such plants, and when asked, Koch said that it had no interest in them. Yet the smear, repeated by left-wing spear carriers like Paul Krugman, refused to die. We wrote about it here and elsewhere.

Now fast-forward to 2013. The proposal to sell the power plants is again being floated, this time as part of Walker’s transportation budget. So how does the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report on the proposal? It resurrects the old Koch Industries speculation, even though no one ever produced a shred of evidence to support it:

When Walker included the proposal in his controversial 2011 bill to end most collective bargaining for public workers, opponents claimed the plants sale could be linked to Koch Industries, a company run by key backers of Walker’s campaign. Koch denied any interest in buying the plants, but two Wisconsin power companies, We Energies and Madison Gas & Electric Co., were interested.

If Gov. Scott Walker is still planning to move ahead with a plan to sell off hundreds of millions of dollars in power plants to help pay for some of the borrowing to fund his $6.4 billion transportation plan, Koch Industries isn’t in a buying mood.

Melissa Cohlmia, a Koch Industries spokeswoman, said Monday that the company has no interest in buying any of the 37 power and heating plants.

“Koch Industries had no interest in Wisconsin’s publicly owned power plants when this issue came up in 2011, and we continue to have absolutely no interest. As was the case when this false storyline emerged in 2011, the plants are obsolete and do not in any way fit Koch companies’ current operations or business plans moving forward.”

Two years ago, Walker put the idea of selling the power and heating plants in his plan to end most collective bargaining for public workers. Opponents jumped on the idea, saying the plants would be snapped up by Koch Industries.

It is the non-story that just won’t die, with seemingly endless “Franco is still dead” reporting. Only, of course, Franco actually existed.

Meanwhile, there is a huge scandal in the field of energy: the Obama administration’s sliding tens of billions of dollars to Democratic Party cronies in the “green energy” industry to support goofy projects that couldn’t exist without government favoritism. This is a real scandal, with real cronyism and real corruption, involving enormous amounts of money. Yet the media simply ignore it, because reporting on it would reflect badly on their party.

Here is another instance from a completely different realm. Earlier today, ABC News wrote this seemingly major news story about an Israeli soldier who posted an inappropriate image on Instagram. The article was picked up by Yahoo News, which means that it was seen my many thousands, possibly millions, of viewers. This is a screen shot of the dramatic headline and photo:

ABC and Yahoo provided a forum for Palestinian leaders to denounce the photo:

The photo was reportedly posted on Jan. 25 by Mor Ostrovski, 20, a member of an Israeli sniper unit. It shows crosshairs zeroed in on the back of the head of what appears to be a Palestinian boy in a village. The photo has since been taken down and Ostrovski’s account has been deactivated. [The soldier says he didn't take the photo, but got it off the internet.]

“There are no other images to suggest that the photographer actually fired at the person in the image in this case,” wrote Palestinian activist Ali Abuminah who runs the site Electronic Intifada and drew much of the attention to the photo. “The image is simply tasteless and dehumanizing. It embodies the idea that Palestinian children are targets.”

Not only that, this wasn’t the first time an Israeli soldier has posted an inappropriate photo on the internet! ABC sees a pattern:

The uproar over the photo follows another posted by an Israeli infantryman on Facebook around a week ago. In it, he mocked the four Palestinian prisoners he was guarding by posing bound and blindfolded next to them. He was sentenced to 14 days detention after the brigade’s commanders discovered the photo and ordered it taken down.

Here is an interesting question: which number is larger, the number of inappropriate images posted on social media sites in any 24-hour period, or the number of stars in the sky? If the soldier had shot someone, it would be a news story (although if it weren’t an Israeli soldier, we wouldn’t have heard about it). But a photo on Instagram? Seriously?

Meanwhile, here is something going on in the same region of the world that is not news:

A Pnei Kedem resident tells his harrowing ordeal of being ambushed by Arabs who ran towards his car with massive stones, smashing windows. …

Incidences of violence such as stones being thrown and molotov cocktails being hurled at Jewish residents are reported daily, yet one resident of Pnei Kedem told Arutz Sheva that he experienced – and has heard numerous stories of — Arabs who no longer hide behind trees and throw stones but run out towards cars with clubs and bats in their hands, smashing windows and causing severe damage and injuries.

Michael Lurie spoke about his nightmare ordeal when he was ambushed last Friday, on his way home from Jerusalem, by Arabs wielding massive stones who were waiting on the side of the road for a target to strike.

Lurie said that about three hundred yards from junction ‘T’, just 15 minutes away from his home, three boys ran on to the road “with death in their eyes and huge stones and smashed two of the car’s windows.”

This is how the liberal media try to shape your opinions: they tell you stories that they think make liberals look good and conservatives look bad, and they conceal from you the news that doesn’t fit their agenda.

UPDATE: Unbelievable. Yahoo decided that not enough people read about the Israeli soldier’s Instagram picture yesterday on Yahoo News, so now they have the story up on the main Yahoo page, the third most trafficked site on the web after Google and Facebook: